Yes, I'm contracted out to a company who has monitoring software on the laptop.
One guy got reported because he played an MKV file on the work laptop at home. Off a thumbdrive, so it was never even downloaded to the laptop - he just copied it to watch.
No, he didn't get fired, but it's ended up on his HR profile.
And no, you can't VPN in from a non-issued laptop - the VPN software verifies it's a company build.
I don't know when the software does its reporting, but to be honest, a cheap netbook isn't THAT expensive and they're fairly light and portable. If you spend a bit more you can get something like an ultrabook and use that for personal stuff.
Are people really running machines with that little ram? I have 4GB on my 2 year old computer. Heck my last computer (which was work supplied and circa ~2008) had 2GB (Mac Leopard) and was fine. 400MB is a lot of RAM for a browser put it is rare that I'm anywhere's near my system RAM limit so I don't care.
I'm running Firefox 3.6 on a machine running Windows 2000 with 512MB of RAM (built it around the turn of the millennium). For web browsing, it's quite sufficient.
Of course, I think I can't upgrade because the latest firefox doesn't support Windows 2000 anymore, and this machine running XP probably won't happen (I don't think XP SP3 works on 512MB anymore).
Of course, on other systems, I play around with profiles a lot, and FF4 got rid of the profile manager. They made it separate trial download, and I'm not sure if they ever re-incorporated profile manager back in. (I use it for some websites like eBay/Gawker where opening a whole pile of tabs causes lots of leaks - being able to shut down firefox after browsing those sites means I don't have to keep restarting main Firefox).
You forgot to mention that Valve will have its box for sale, and its form factor and default software will be tailor made for TV use. The UI will probably be centered around a game pad. So not only do you have the specs, you have a marketable product.
And to reinforce what you already said: To the non-technical, buying a gaming PC is tricky. Countless people have no doubt been burned whey they bought a $300 PC hoping it would play the latest games, only to be disappointed when their on-board video card turned everything into a slide show. Or maybe they listened to the salesman at Best Buy who convinced them that to really play games smoothly they were going to have to drop at least $1,500. So you could deal with all that mess, or you could spend $300 on an XBox and KNOW you're good to go. Valve knows that if buying a gaming PC were as easy as buying an XBox that they could potentially see a lot more customers.
Two things.
1) It will probably look better than any gaming rig or desktop PC connected to a TV. Face it - the biggest cost on most HTPCs is the case, if you're going for something the wife would approve and something that looks like a piece of equipment that belongs in the living room. Gaming capable desktop PCs are either only meant to work in the tower orientation (with all sorts of portrusions), or have so many gaudy lights and decals that glow/blink/etc that make it look like crap compared to all the other A/V equipment out there.
And yes, looks ARE important if you want the wife to approve and not kick it into the computer room.
Understated HTPC cases can easily cost $300-500 but look like modern A/V equipment.
2) Perhaps if it takes off, PC gaming won't be a solo activity - we can gather 2-4 people on the couch, give them a controller, and start playing off one PC, like we can with consoles today.
The only way to enforce such an act would be to require that voters present ID -- something to which I'm sure you'd be opposed.
Here in Canada they do that.
Here's how the elections are done. You arrive at the location, and present your voter card (fi registered) or ID (if not). The greeter will direct you to one of several tables set up for registering your vote. They will ask for government photo ID, and find you on the voter's list, to which you must then place your signature beside your name on the list.
Then the volunteer tears a ballot off the the booklet, and records the serial number of the ballot beside your name. They hand you the ballot, and you got make your choices. When you return, you hand the ballot back, they tear off the serial number foil and deposit it in a bag. The now anonymized (there's no serial number anymore) ballot goes into the box.
So now there's several safeguards.
One - voter is assigned a ballot box. Thus the names and signatures on the registration sheet must correspond to a ballot, so there should be no extra nor short any ballots.
Second, the serial number stubs are kept, and verified to ensure that the voter got the right ballot, and there too has to be the same number of stubs as voters. The unused books are returned and serial numbers verified to ensure proper count of unused ballots.
If someone wanted to stuff the ballot box, they could, but they'd have to know exactly how many ballots there are, and do reprints of the ballots (since they're all numbered, the number of ballots left over plus the number of ballots cast or spoiled must equal the number printed).
And the serial number is unique to the ballot - a different voting region will not have ballots with the same serial number - they are all unique.
Still can't avoid fraud or voter intimidation, but there are plenty of checks available.
What I don't get is why can't we turn the grid completely off?
we can see when these storms happen (because they emit light), and the charged particles that cause all the problems take a little while to reach us (hours/days).
If we know it's going to cause a huge problem with the electrical grid, can't we just, uh, turn it off? Sure there'll be massive blackouts, but I'm sure that's better than the damage these storms can cause (the damage occurs at the transformers). Especially since replacing the equipment costs lots and has months of lead time as they're all handmade.
At the very least, it seems cheapest to find ways to take down the large transcontinental cables (which will be the ones that generate the largest stray currents) and temporarily ground the cables.
I know generators and such can't be suddenly powered off, but if we have sufficient warning, we can start blacking out and creating power islands and separating grids out so the damage incurred will be minimal.
Think about it - a lot of nuclear power plants require poewr from the grid for backup cooling, and those go through the vulnerable transformers - this happens and blows the transformer out (which takes weeks/months to replace) and you've got a meltdown.
So a coordinated way to turn off the grid, suffer a blackout for a few days is far better than suffering from no power for a few months (the more warning we have, the faster it'll come up again). And essential services can prepare - backup power lasting days is still easier to obtain than ones lasting months.
Generally, insurance policies are written for things with a strongly-known approximate value. Jewlery, physical property, buildings, a fixed amount of cash in a safe.... You can't generally get insurance on things with fluctuating value like real estate (you can insure the building on top of it, but you can't insure the lot against loss of value), various financial instruments, commodities futures, etc. Bit coins are highly variable - if I take out a policy against 10,000 bit coins, and they're lost, what value would the policy pay out based on? The value at the time I got my policy? The value at the time they were stolen? The value at the time the claim is settled? Does this take into account that if someone steals a large number of bitcoins, they're probably going to liquidate them quickly, which would depress the market? If the policy is based on the value at the time it's issued, the insured party has a motivation to purposefully lose or destroy the coins if the market dramatically drops - the insured value is higher than the market value. On the other hand, if the policy is based on the market value at the time of the incident, the insurance company's costs can skyrocket and no sane underwriter would write such a policy.
Guess what? All of them!
You can take an insurance policy on what the coins where worth when the agreement was signed. At that point, the insurer is basically converting it to a common currency (e.g., US Dollar) and insuring you for that amount.
You can take an insurance policy that gives you replacement value, too - at which point the insurance company will pick a day to pay out, and either give you the insured product, or the cash equivalent.
In all cases, the insurer will have to figure out the rate - if I was an insurer, I might take the spotty history of Bitcoin, and see that the past year, it topped at $20/coin. I would then set it out for 10,000 coins at $20/coin, or $200,000 plan. If it goes up to $30 one time, I would increase the premium you pay since it's cover $300,000 now.
And don't forget that there are often maximums as well. E.g., if the price goes up to $30, and you lose them all, the policy may state that it's replacement value, up to $200,000, whichever is lower.
Most future employers will not expect to speak to all of your previous employers, and as long as you yourself aren't the problem, there will be other references you can use. Plus, if you apply for a job while holding an existing one, they generally won't insist on contacting your current employer, meaning the best time to jump ship from a toxic boss is while still employed.
Most future employers can't. Unless you worked at very big multinationals like IBM and such, the smaller companies you worked for may have changed names (e.g., SCO -> Tarantella, Caldera -> SCO), went out of business, got acquired/merged by another company, etc. So even if you helpfully give them last known phone numbers, it could very well have been given to a new company.
Beyond 10 years or so, chasing prior employers gets REALLY hard unless you're talking about companies on the order Apple, Cisco, Broadcom, Intel, AMD, TI, Freescale/Motorola (example), IBM to which are easy to get in contact with. But if you worked at Pets.com - who can you call to verify?
Education though - many employers DO check this because most universities and other instritutions have been around long enough to have contact information. There are services that employers have that can verify outside credentials as well.
as Linus is on the warpath this week, I think he should shoot whomever came up with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin Beta 1 So tenths aren't enough we must go to hundreds then have abbreviatiations and silly names and then Beta (isnt that what the 0.0X is for?) and the cheery on top, "1". Ubuntu has jumped the naming shark
Actually, Ubuntu naming is pretty easy.
12 - the last two digits of the year, 2012. 04 - the month to which it is to be/was released (in this case, April).
So 12.04 will be released in April 2012. LTS means that it's a "long term" version with support until 15.04 comes out (14.04 will probably be LTS). Non-LTS versions go up, so if you installed 10.10 (Octoer 2010), you will have to upgrade to 11.04, 11.10, and 12.04, at which point you can decide if you want to stay with 12.04, or go to 12.10.
I guess we should dust off our old Xbox hacking skills if that's the case.
I mean, if the Playstation 4 is going AMD Fusion, it'll probably be x86 with GPU, and we all know the fun that was had breaking into the original Xbox (which was originally done with AMD parts before they switched to Intel)
Of course, they could always take the lessons of the Xbox and fix it so it won't be a problem. Oh wait, it's Sony, nevermind.
I would say that losing the source code to some of the embedded control systems in the ISS is just about the LEAST valuable theft of source code, ever. That code is most likely extremely specialized, designed JUST for whatever system on the ISS in question, and probably had millions of dollars put into refining, optimizing, and debugging it. I bet the code is completely unsuitable for any other purpose for that reason (one way to reduce bugs is to make the code as specific as possible in a low level language).
And, whatever system we are talking about : ventilation, communications, power, water recycling : you can safely bet that the way NASA designed it is TOTALLY unsuitable for commercial use. It probably uses the most expensive possible parts, made by hand, for crucial components of the systems.
Not to mention that given the requirements of the systems (safety-critical) there's probably a ton of work and documentation that has to go into even doing a checkin, so even having the code doesn't mean you can check it into NASA's code repository unnoticed.
The only real value is if the theft consisted of other stuff like datasheets and documentation of the various parts and how they work moreso than the code itself. At least with the latter you have the designs of the system which has commercial value.
Or if there was other classified data on it.
The source code? Not so much. I know, some of us like to run the old Apollo code (which is readily available) on our PCs just for kicks, but that's really all it is.
This is a fairly serious issue, but one that can be brought up after the basics of computer programming have been instilled. Most languages are either loosely typed, duck-typed, or have robust conversion features these days. Kids who learn to mangle a string in Javascript will pick up quickly on 'You have to use a 'to_str' method in some other languages'.
If only that were the case - you start seeing a lot of reimplements of functions like "to_str()" and the inverse (strtoi/strtoul/etc) because what was transparent to them before, suddenly they can't do it and don't realize it's a library function. So they promptly end up rewriting those functions and it ends up carried along to finally end up on The Daily WTF.
Or worse, you just fuel the language wars... "Javascrpit is cool - Java/C#/C/C++ all suck because it's so hard to take a string and treat it as a number so you can add to it. You have to do write functions to do it for you".
No it came from Freescale in a driver that Toshiba used. Not many know that the original Zune was a Toshiba Gigabeat with a new UI and outer shell.
Yeah, it was a really stupid bug, especially when you consider the OS provides a very useful set of APIs for dealing with it (basically convert a SYSTEMTIME (day/month/year/mm/hh/ss) into a FILETIME (64-bit unsigned int similar to time_t), do your math (the compiler will handle the 64-bit computations for you) and convert it back. Two OS calls.
If you're having ot do leap year calculations or even any sort of date calculations, stop. The OS or library will probably already have a set of functions for doing date calculations without you have to do it manually. Given how easy they are to screw up, far better to leave it to someone else.
Hell, given Windows worked fine, I don't even want to know what Azure is doing - the fundamental OS and runtimes all handle leap year date calculations with aplomb. Heck, that might be some of the oldest code in the kernel these days because it was written a long time ago, works well and has been thoroughly debugged through the decades.
Then I hate to inform you that Facebook knows as much if not moreso then Google does about you. You also forgot the Facebook Content Distribution Network and all of those Like Buttons and yes they combine all of that information with your profile, just like Google and MS are doing. The big question, Is facebook doing anything different then Google or Microsoft?
Google simultaneously owns the least intrusive and most intrusive ad network on the internet, and those account for a large majority of ads served. Additionally, not every site has the "like" button, but a lot more sites have advertising served eventually by Google.
Google has a CDN as well, and their Analytics required working around in NoScript because if you blocked Google Analytics, web sites broke. Heck, some sites break if you block DoubleClick (a Google owned company).
And let's not forget Google owns the mobile space - AdMob, the largest mobile advertising company runs on all platforms and provides in-app ads as well as mobile ads. (And AdMob will thus know how long you've played Angry Birds...).
And everyone loves ot embed YouTube videos around.
Plus there's probably tons more properties Google owns. Heck, Google might actually be "too big to fail" in that should Google disappear entirely (and all their properties) huge chunks of the internet will break.
Not really surprising, since it doesn't affect 90% of the public.
You may be surprised to know that most people go about their lives without spending a second thought on movies or music. If it's there for them when they return home, they might watch it.
Or more likely, they don't know they do it. Casual copying is fairly large and most people don't consider it a crime (encouraged back in the day with dual-deck cassette decks that could do high-speed dubbing).
They probably visit some web site and click "download song" without a second thought, unaware of the legal implications. Just like people used to dub tapes or give away mixtapes and such - it's such an ingrained behavior that most people don't realize it's actually illegal.
Heck, I'm fairly certain a good chunk of people copy movies and games they borrow from friends very innocently (the tools to do so are basically "insert, copy, done")
I'm sure the 90% would be affected by things like this, it's just they don't know it yet nor realize it. Heck, in many places it's actually illegal to placeshift/timeshift, yet you'll find DVD recorders, VCRs/DVRs, and all the other tools to do stuff like that on the shelves of stores.
Lol so the very fact that there is a universe, in which we can contemplate the laws of physics, is itself a phenomenon that the standard models can't yet explain? Nice. Seems like a minor hole:)
The standard model also doesn't explain dark matter, gravity, quantum physics and pile of other things. However, it does explain a lot of things really well, so until we can come up with the Grand Unified Theory of Everything, we're stuck with what we got.
It's like how Newton's equations of motion work extremely well for general everyday human-scale physics, but fail when you go really small or really fast.
Lots of things we understand in physics have limitations, and as long as we observe them, they do hold up.
Remember it for what it was originally made for... an operating system to learn from while coding. You might not remember those days, but when you have a working operating system that is minimal in code size, it's easier to grasp.
I'm just a little disoriented by the need to advance it, unless it's a minimal codebase of the NetBSD variety. Then again, they did say it was "pulled" from NetBSD, so that'd mean in my mind it's not minimal... which nullifies that.... and we're back to square one.
I think it's evolving the userspace side - while the Minix is the kernel side. The userspace of Minix suffered and gets crufty as people can't use what they already know since the Minix userspace starts looking a little barren.
There are lots of teaching operating systems out there. Most are just applications that run on another OS to teach basic concepts like multithreading, locking and such. Minix appears to be the end goal - an OS that can be taught running on real hardware. A userspace revamp to make it feel modern and not a toy. And being able to go and compile some program you wrote on an OS you're tinkering with can trigger excitement among students.
And there's probably a ton of OS research going on with Minix as well, and not having to put up with limitations on tools because the userspace can't run them is helpful.
Sounds great, most managers refuse to allot time for IT to do this. do you give them 4-8 hours a week to get documentation proper?
The easiest way is to stick the time somewhere else.
First, if you're doing something like setting up a new switch or other basic piece of equipment, you add the hour or two of documentation to the installation time - it's part of the time to do installation, after all.
If it's a more complex machine like a server, it adds to the installation. If you want, document everything - what you installed on it, where it was installed, what ports it's listening on, copies of the config file, etc. It's part of the install. With Windows it's easy as there's long down periods between periods of activity - perfect for working on the docs.
Documenting existing systems will have to come out of somewhere, but make sure you add documentation time to all new projects going forward - the old stuff may be undocumented still, but doesn't mean the new stuff should be as well.
And if your manager asks why it takes you an hour longer, say you're doing it right and employing best practices.
Also, don't document post-setup and installation, document while installing. Yeah it breaks the routine of "clicky clicky clicky" and "sudo sudo sudo" but it's a lot easier to document that way.
I just bought a car with a backup cam less than 2 weeks ago. I can see everything in the cam that I can see in the mirrors unless I move them to some weird angle. So long as I have the camera set to "wide angle" view, that is. The picture quality is pretty crappy at night, though.
Depends on the car.
Some car backup cams are literally rear-view window replacements - you can see far back and around, and they cover the rear blind spot.
Others merely give you a view of the rear blind spot, and expect you to see around as normal. These cams are still useful since they provide a view of the rear blind spot (which can be VERY big), but cannot be used solely.
The most important part is the rear blind spot - it's quite big on a lot of cars (not just SUVs).
Getting people used to the idea of automotive fuels OTHER than gasoline, and the infrastructures to support it is an overall good thing, regardless of the fuel source. If you can convince the populace at large that 2-3 vehicle fuel sources are commonly available and easy to use, then it's less difficult to get another fuel source (say electricity or fuel cells) into the mix.
There's another benefit as well - when the cheap oil supplies run out - the economy won't crash. So much of our lives are powered by oil that a sudden spike after all the easy oil supplies have disappeared will put us in an even worlse economic state than the current recession, maybe even worse than the great depression.
Think about it - food gets trucked in from all over the globe (and people are too far removed from the food sources). Water often has to be trucked in. We need oil to transport people around to maintain infrastructure, emergency services and other tasks. And that's not considering our consumer use of oil. When it "runs out" (it doesn't ever run out since it's based on biological decay), all those things come to a screeching halt.
Electric cars are currently only good for short commutes, but we still need long-haul alternatives. If we can substitute in natural gas, then the coming oil price spike won't devestate the world economy too badly. We'll at least be able to maintain somewhat comfortable lives without resorting to complete societal breakdown.
Um, all "Mastered for iTunes" does is allow producers to preview how the final file will sound when placed on iTunes, so that they can make changes to the master file. Not sure what the point of the story is, and it definitely has nothing to do with CDs or FLAC.
Exactly.
If you want to put it on iTunes, you can simply take your source audio and dump it to AAC and put it up with zero changes.
If, however, you want it to sound possible better in the general environment it's going to be used in (portable players with weedy amplifiers and headphones), then you need to take the audio and adjust it to compensate for the listening environment AND the compression.algorithm. If you take this effort, the audio can sound possibly better, and you get the "Mastered for iTunes" mark.
In the end, they're still just 256kbps AAC files. Mastered for iTunes ones are supposed to sound better in the environment that the music is typically listened on. Surprisingly, it supposed to reduce the bass as well to prevent the bass from wiping everything else out.
Not, they're not higher quality files, but they're also not just raw compressed audio - the sound engineer did some work.
Harris doesn't mess around with Mom & Pop unless Mom & Pop are producing something for DoD or have some other very well connected, essential work.
Perhaps they should've targeted that market. They could be the cloud provider AND escrow service. If Mom and Pop working for DoD goes tits up, the servers are available for the DoD to continue research. If they go rogue, the evidence is on the servers.
Harris could go after the secure hosting angle as well - the Feds can maintain their own data center, but can the various small contractors? DoD could simply mandate that data be stored in a certain fashion with escrow and Harris could be one of the few providers offering such security services.
DoD contractors required to store all the data "in a secured cloud provider escrowed to the DoD".
I think there is some confusion about the dictionary definition of monopoly and the legal definition. In the UK, at least, you are deemed to hold a monopoly position within a market if you control more than 25%, which apple certainly does in the smartphone market.
Well, I'd go after Google first then. I hear something called "Android" is WAY more popular than the iPhone. In fact, didn't they just admit that there's over 300M Androids out there?
I mean, aren't Android phones outselling iPhones? If being outsold still means you have a monopoly, that's a very strange state of affairs.
From Wikipedia... 1975: Steven Sasson, then an electrical engineer at Kodak, invented the digital camera.
1976: The Bayer Pattern color filter array (CFA) was invented by Eastman Kodak researcher Bryce Bayer. The order in which dyes are placed on an image sensor photosite is still in use today. The basic technology is still the most commonly used of its kind to date.
And, their sensor division made extremely high quality sensors for scientific, industrial and consumer cameras.
Makes it even more ironic and baffling that they couldn't make it in the digital world.
They could've.
The problem is, they didn't want to.
The digital camera came about because Sasson didn't have anything to do, so Sasson's boss gave him a newfangled CCD sensor and a camera and asked him to do something with it.
The reason it never took off was Kodak shelved it, out of fear for their primary business, film and photochemicals.
The digital sensors Kodak made are good, but Kodak targeted them at markets where it wouldn't cannibalize their existing business.
And that, was Kodak's fatal mistake. Instead of trying to capitalize on the coming digital revolution, they buried it, wanting ot preserve their existing business.
Basically they needed a leader who was willing to adapt and cannibalize their existing business in order to grow into new markets. Like how Apple cannibalized their iPods with the iPhone (as well as very popular iPod models with new iPod models - e.g., the Nano vs. the Mini). They're cannibalizing the low end Mac market with the iPad.
Heck, Kodak's first foray into consumer level digital photography was the QuickTake (designed, built, manufactured by Kodak for Apple) way back in the early 90s and hailed as one of the cheapest digital cameras around (at several hundred dollars). Prior to this you only had digital backs, nothing for the consumer. A few years later (mid-late 90's) the digital camera revolution took off.
Ogg Vorbis lost to mp3 because for the longest time there was no fixed point implementation of an ogg vorbis decoder, while there was one for mp3. This made the hardware to decode ogg vorbis more expensive, and hence no one made one.
Incorrect. Vorbis lost to MP3 for several reasons.
First, ubiquity - by the time Vorbis came out (and was decent), MP3 was firmly established as the format to use and there were MP3 players out. All the tools and such were in place to ript CDs and produce MP3 files, and everyone (because of Napster) figured out what MP3s where.
Second, the best-selling player of all time didn't support it. The iPod, the world's first *decent* MP3 player (it was small and held lots of music - something neither the flash-based players nor the hard drive/CD players could claim).
Third, people didn't care. MP3 was "good enough" and fit in people's lives already. As a free alternative, Vorbis didn't do any better.than MP3 so most people simply said "why should I bother?"
The integer decoder part wasn't really an issue. Though, it did have a negative effect - the MP3 kernel (in DSP, a kernel is the core chunk of code that does the desired processing) could fit in the DSP's instruction cache, so decoding MP3s meant the DSP did not have to hit instruction memory. Vorbis was too big for the cache, so decoding a Vorbis file meant the cache had to be thrashed. Activating RAM meant a much shorter battery life. (What happened was the RAM buffer was filled from flash or other media, then the mass storage is turned off. The decode begins by having the data cache pre-filled with the RAM buffer, then RAM was put into low-power idle mode as it wasn't going to be used. The decoded audio heads straight to the DAC, and when the datacache is empty, RAM is brought up and a new chunk of data is brought into the cache. With Vorbis, the RAM couldn't shut down as the DSP needed to access it to decode a Vorbis file).
Now, that's not to say that Vorbis isn't used. It's used quite extensively in games and other stuff (including iOS - take apart an iOS game and a lot of the music assets are in Vorbis format). Many reasons for that - it's patent/royalty free, and the decoder code is BSD, so developers love stuff like that because it means no license fees and they can close the source. I believe many of the libraries used also support Vorbis for that reason - the library maker has a license-free, patent-free, royalty-free compressed music format they can sell to the users.
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Yes, I'm contracted out to a company who has monitoring software on the laptop.
One guy got reported because he played an MKV file on the work laptop at home. Off a thumbdrive, so it was never even downloaded to the laptop - he just copied it to watch.
No, he didn't get fired, but it's ended up on his HR profile.
And no, you can't VPN in from a non-issued laptop - the VPN software verifies it's a company build.
I don't know when the software does its reporting, but to be honest, a cheap netbook isn't THAT expensive and they're fairly light and portable. If you spend a bit more you can get something like an ultrabook and use that for personal stuff.
And invest in a good 3G/4G dongle.
I'm running Firefox 3.6 on a machine running Windows 2000 with 512MB of RAM (built it around the turn of the millennium). For web browsing, it's quite sufficient.
Of course, I think I can't upgrade because the latest firefox doesn't support Windows 2000 anymore, and this machine running XP probably won't happen (I don't think XP SP3 works on 512MB anymore).
Of course, on other systems, I play around with profiles a lot, and FF4 got rid of the profile manager. They made it separate trial download, and I'm not sure if they ever re-incorporated profile manager back in. (I use it for some websites like eBay/Gawker where opening a whole pile of tabs causes lots of leaks - being able to shut down firefox after browsing those sites means I don't have to keep restarting main Firefox).
Here in Canada they do that.
Here's how the elections are done. You arrive at the location, and present your voter card (fi registered) or ID (if not). The greeter will direct you to one of several tables set up for registering your vote. They will ask for government photo ID, and find you on the voter's list, to which you must then place your signature beside your name on the list.
Then the volunteer tears a ballot off the the booklet, and records the serial number of the ballot beside your name. They hand you the ballot, and you got make your choices. When you return, you hand the ballot back, they tear off the serial number foil and deposit it in a bag. The now anonymized (there's no serial number anymore) ballot goes into the box.
So now there's several safeguards.
One - voter is assigned a ballot box. Thus the names and signatures on the registration sheet must correspond to a ballot, so there should be no extra nor short any ballots.
Second, the serial number stubs are kept, and verified to ensure that the voter got the right ballot, and there too has to be the same number of stubs as voters. The unused books are returned and serial numbers verified to ensure proper count of unused ballots.
If someone wanted to stuff the ballot box, they could, but they'd have to know exactly how many ballots there are, and do reprints of the ballots (since they're all numbered, the number of ballots left over plus the number of ballots cast or spoiled must equal the number printed).
And the serial number is unique to the ballot - a different voting region will not have ballots with the same serial number - they are all unique.
Still can't avoid fraud or voter intimidation, but there are plenty of checks available.
What I don't get is why can't we turn the grid completely off?
we can see when these storms happen (because they emit light), and the charged particles that cause all the problems take a little while to reach us (hours/days).
If we know it's going to cause a huge problem with the electrical grid, can't we just, uh, turn it off? Sure there'll be massive blackouts, but I'm sure that's better than the damage these storms can cause (the damage occurs at the transformers). Especially since replacing the equipment costs lots and has months of lead time as they're all handmade.
At the very least, it seems cheapest to find ways to take down the large transcontinental cables (which will be the ones that generate the largest stray currents) and temporarily ground the cables.
I know generators and such can't be suddenly powered off, but if we have sufficient warning, we can start blacking out and creating power islands and separating grids out so the damage incurred will be minimal.
Think about it - a lot of nuclear power plants require poewr from the grid for backup cooling, and those go through the vulnerable transformers - this happens and blows the transformer out (which takes weeks/months to replace) and you've got a meltdown.
So a coordinated way to turn off the grid, suffer a blackout for a few days is far better than suffering from no power for a few months (the more warning we have, the faster it'll come up again). And essential services can prepare - backup power lasting days is still easier to obtain than ones lasting months.
Guess what? All of them!
You can take an insurance policy on what the coins where worth when the agreement was signed. At that point, the insurer is basically converting it to a common currency (e.g., US Dollar) and insuring you for that amount.
You can take an insurance policy that gives you replacement value, too - at which point the insurance company will pick a day to pay out, and either give you the insured product, or the cash equivalent.
In all cases, the insurer will have to figure out the rate - if I was an insurer, I might take the spotty history of Bitcoin, and see that the past year, it topped at $20/coin. I would then set it out for 10,000 coins at $20/coin, or $200,000 plan. If it goes up to $30 one time, I would increase the premium you pay since it's cover $300,000 now.
And don't forget that there are often maximums as well. E.g., if the price goes up to $30, and you lose them all, the policy may state that it's replacement value, up to $200,000, whichever is lower.
Most future employers can't. Unless you worked at very big multinationals like IBM and such, the smaller companies you worked for may have changed names (e.g., SCO -> Tarantella, Caldera -> SCO), went out of business, got acquired/merged by another company, etc. So even if you helpfully give them last known phone numbers, it could very well have been given to a new company.
Beyond 10 years or so, chasing prior employers gets REALLY hard unless you're talking about companies on the order Apple, Cisco, Broadcom, Intel, AMD, TI, Freescale/Motorola (example), IBM to which are easy to get in contact with. But if you worked at Pets.com - who can you call to verify?
Education though - many employers DO check this because most universities and other instritutions have been around long enough to have contact information. There are services that employers have that can verify outside credentials as well.
Actually, Ubuntu naming is pretty easy.
12 - the last two digits of the year, 2012.
04 - the month to which it is to be/was released (in this case, April).
So 12.04 will be released in April 2012. LTS means that it's a "long term" version with support until 15.04 comes out (14.04 will probably be LTS). Non-LTS versions go up, so if you installed 10.10 (Octoer 2010), you will have to upgrade to 11.04, 11.10, and 12.04, at which point you can decide if you want to stay with 12.04, or go to 12.10.
And it's beta because well, it's March!
I guess we should dust off our old Xbox hacking skills if that's the case.
I mean, if the Playstation 4 is going AMD Fusion, it'll probably be x86 with GPU, and we all know the fun that was had breaking into the original Xbox (which was originally done with AMD parts before they switched to Intel)
Of course, they could always take the lessons of the Xbox and fix it so it won't be a problem. Oh wait, it's Sony, nevermind.
Not to mention that given the requirements of the systems (safety-critical) there's probably a ton of work and documentation that has to go into even doing a checkin, so even having the code doesn't mean you can check it into NASA's code repository unnoticed.
The only real value is if the theft consisted of other stuff like datasheets and documentation of the various parts and how they work moreso than the code itself. At least with the latter you have the designs of the system which has commercial value.
Or if there was other classified data on it.
The source code? Not so much. I know, some of us like to run the old Apollo code (which is readily available) on our PCs just for kicks, but that's really all it is.
If only that were the case - you start seeing a lot of reimplements of functions like "to_str()" and the inverse (strtoi/strtoul/etc) because what was transparent to them before, suddenly they can't do it and don't realize it's a library function. So they promptly end up rewriting those functions and it ends up carried along to finally end up on The Daily WTF.
Or worse, you just fuel the language wars... "Javascrpit is cool - Java/C#/C/C++ all suck because it's so hard to take a string and treat it as a number so you can add to it. You have to do write functions to do it for you".
Yeah, it was a really stupid bug, especially when you consider the OS provides a very useful set of APIs for dealing with it (basically convert a SYSTEMTIME (day/month/year/mm/hh/ss) into a FILETIME (64-bit unsigned int similar to time_t), do your math (the compiler will handle the 64-bit computations for you) and convert it back. Two OS calls.
If you're having ot do leap year calculations or even any sort of date calculations, stop. The OS or library will probably already have a set of functions for doing date calculations without you have to do it manually. Given how easy they are to screw up, far better to leave it to someone else.
Hell, given Windows worked fine, I don't even want to know what Azure is doing - the fundamental OS and runtimes all handle leap year date calculations with aplomb. Heck, that might be some of the oldest code in the kernel these days because it was written a long time ago, works well and has been thoroughly debugged through the decades.
Google simultaneously owns the least intrusive and most intrusive ad network on the internet, and those account for a large majority of ads served. Additionally, not every site has the "like" button, but a lot more sites have advertising served eventually by Google.
Google has a CDN as well, and their Analytics required working around in NoScript because if you blocked Google Analytics, web sites broke. Heck, some sites break if you block DoubleClick (a Google owned company).
And let's not forget Google owns the mobile space - AdMob, the largest mobile advertising company runs on all platforms and provides in-app ads as well as mobile ads. (And AdMob will thus know how long you've played Angry Birds...).
And everyone loves ot embed YouTube videos around.
Plus there's probably tons more properties Google owns. Heck, Google might actually be "too big to fail" in that should Google disappear entirely (and all their properties) huge chunks of the internet will break.
Or more likely, they don't know they do it. Casual copying is fairly large and most people don't consider it a crime (encouraged back in the day with dual-deck cassette decks that could do high-speed dubbing).
They probably visit some web site and click "download song" without a second thought, unaware of the legal implications. Just like people used to dub tapes or give away mixtapes and such - it's such an ingrained behavior that most people don't realize it's actually illegal.
Heck, I'm fairly certain a good chunk of people copy movies and games they borrow from friends very innocently (the tools to do so are basically "insert, copy, done")
I'm sure the 90% would be affected by things like this, it's just they don't know it yet nor realize it. Heck, in many places it's actually illegal to placeshift/timeshift, yet you'll find DVD recorders, VCRs/DVRs, and all the other tools to do stuff like that on the shelves of stores.
The standard model also doesn't explain dark matter, gravity, quantum physics and pile of other things. However, it does explain a lot of things really well, so until we can come up with the Grand Unified Theory of Everything, we're stuck with what we got.
It's like how Newton's equations of motion work extremely well for general everyday human-scale physics, but fail when you go really small or really fast.
Lots of things we understand in physics have limitations, and as long as we observe them, they do hold up.
I think it's evolving the userspace side - while the Minix is the kernel side. The userspace of Minix suffered and gets crufty as people can't use what they already know since the Minix userspace starts looking a little barren.
There are lots of teaching operating systems out there. Most are just applications that run on another OS to teach basic concepts like multithreading, locking and such. Minix appears to be the end goal - an OS that can be taught running on real hardware. A userspace revamp to make it feel modern and not a toy. And being able to go and compile some program you wrote on an OS you're tinkering with can trigger excitement among students.
And there's probably a ton of OS research going on with Minix as well, and not having to put up with limitations on tools because the userspace can't run them is helpful.
The easiest way is to stick the time somewhere else.
First, if you're doing something like setting up a new switch or other basic piece of equipment, you add the hour or two of documentation to the installation time - it's part of the time to do installation, after all.
If it's a more complex machine like a server, it adds to the installation. If you want, document everything - what you installed on it, where it was installed, what ports it's listening on, copies of the config file, etc. It's part of the install. With Windows it's easy as there's long down periods between periods of activity - perfect for working on the docs.
Documenting existing systems will have to come out of somewhere, but make sure you add documentation time to all new projects going forward - the old stuff may be undocumented still, but doesn't mean the new stuff should be as well.
And if your manager asks why it takes you an hour longer, say you're doing it right and employing best practices.
Also, don't document post-setup and installation, document while installing. Yeah it breaks the routine of "clicky clicky clicky" and "sudo sudo sudo" but it's a lot easier to document that way.
Depends on the car.
Some car backup cams are literally rear-view window replacements - you can see far back and around, and they cover the rear blind spot.
Others merely give you a view of the rear blind spot, and expect you to see around as normal. These cams are still useful since they provide a view of the rear blind spot (which can be VERY big), but cannot be used solely.
The most important part is the rear blind spot - it's quite big on a lot of cars (not just SUVs).
There's another benefit as well - when the cheap oil supplies run out - the economy won't crash. So much of our lives are powered by oil that a sudden spike after all the easy oil supplies have disappeared will put us in an even worlse economic state than the current recession, maybe even worse than the great depression.
Think about it - food gets trucked in from all over the globe (and people are too far removed from the food sources). Water often has to be trucked in. We need oil to transport people around to maintain infrastructure, emergency services and other tasks. And that's not considering our consumer use of oil. When it "runs out" (it doesn't ever run out since it's based on biological decay), all those things come to a screeching halt.
Electric cars are currently only good for short commutes, but we still need long-haul alternatives. If we can substitute in natural gas, then the coming oil price spike won't devestate the world economy too badly. We'll at least be able to maintain somewhat comfortable lives without resorting to complete societal breakdown.
Exactly.
If you want to put it on iTunes, you can simply take your source audio and dump it to AAC and put it up with zero changes.
If, however, you want it to sound possible better in the general environment it's going to be used in (portable players with weedy amplifiers and headphones), then you need to take the audio and adjust it to compensate for the listening environment AND the compression.algorithm. If you take this effort, the audio can sound possibly better, and you get the "Mastered for iTunes" mark.
In the end, they're still just 256kbps AAC files. Mastered for iTunes ones are supposed to sound better in the environment that the music is typically listened on. Surprisingly, it supposed to reduce the bass as well to prevent the bass from wiping everything else out.
Not, they're not higher quality files, but they're also not just raw compressed audio - the sound engineer did some work.
Just wait a little bit, they'll go "poof" and disappear, taking care of the problem.
Perhaps they should've targeted that market. They could be the cloud provider AND escrow service. If Mom and Pop working for DoD goes tits up, the servers are available for the DoD to continue research. If they go rogue, the evidence is on the servers.
Harris could go after the secure hosting angle as well - the Feds can maintain their own data center, but can the various small contractors? DoD could simply mandate that data be stored in a certain fashion with escrow and Harris could be one of the few providers offering such security services.
DoD contractors required to store all the data "in a secured cloud provider escrowed to the DoD".
Well, I'd go after Google first then. I hear something called "Android" is WAY more popular than the iPhone. In fact, didn't they just admit that there's over 300M Androids out there?
I mean, aren't Android phones outselling iPhones? If being outsold still means you have a monopoly, that's a very strange state of affairs.
They could've.
The problem is, they didn't want to.
The digital camera came about because Sasson didn't have anything to do, so Sasson's boss gave him a newfangled CCD sensor and a camera and asked him to do something with it.
The reason it never took off was Kodak shelved it, out of fear for their primary business, film and photochemicals.
The digital sensors Kodak made are good, but Kodak targeted them at markets where it wouldn't cannibalize their existing business.
And that, was Kodak's fatal mistake. Instead of trying to capitalize on the coming digital revolution, they buried it, wanting ot preserve their existing business.
Basically they needed a leader who was willing to adapt and cannibalize their existing business in order to grow into new markets. Like how Apple cannibalized their iPods with the iPhone (as well as very popular iPod models with new iPod models - e.g., the Nano vs. the Mini). They're cannibalizing the low end Mac market with the iPad.
Heck, Kodak's first foray into consumer level digital photography was the QuickTake (designed, built, manufactured by Kodak for Apple) way back in the early 90s and hailed as one of the cheapest digital cameras around (at several hundred dollars). Prior to this you only had digital backs, nothing for the consumer. A few years later (mid-late 90's) the digital camera revolution took off.
Incorrect. Vorbis lost to MP3 for several reasons.
First, ubiquity - by the time Vorbis came out (and was decent), MP3 was firmly established as the format to use and there were MP3 players out. All the tools and such were in place to ript CDs and produce MP3 files, and everyone (because of Napster) figured out what MP3s where.
Second, the best-selling player of all time didn't support it. The iPod, the world's first *decent* MP3 player (it was small and held lots of music - something neither the flash-based players nor the hard drive/CD players could claim).
Third, people didn't care. MP3 was "good enough" and fit in people's lives already. As a free alternative, Vorbis didn't do any better.than MP3 so most people simply said "why should I bother?"
The integer decoder part wasn't really an issue. Though, it did have a negative effect - the MP3 kernel (in DSP, a kernel is the core chunk of code that does the desired processing) could fit in the DSP's instruction cache, so decoding MP3s meant the DSP did not have to hit instruction memory. Vorbis was too big for the cache, so decoding a Vorbis file meant the cache had to be thrashed. Activating RAM meant a much shorter battery life. (What happened was the RAM buffer was filled from flash or other media, then the mass storage is turned off. The decode begins by having the data cache pre-filled with the RAM buffer, then RAM was put into low-power idle mode as it wasn't going to be used. The decoded audio heads straight to the DAC, and when the datacache is empty, RAM is brought up and a new chunk of data is brought into the cache. With Vorbis, the RAM couldn't shut down as the DSP needed to access it to decode a Vorbis file).
Now, that's not to say that Vorbis isn't used. It's used quite extensively in games and other stuff (including iOS - take apart an iOS game and a lot of the music assets are in Vorbis format). Many reasons for that - it's patent/royalty free, and the decoder code is BSD, so developers love stuff like that because it means no license fees and they can close the source. I believe many of the libraries used also support Vorbis for that reason - the library maker has a license-free, patent-free, royalty-free compressed music format they can sell to the users.